‘Exorcist’ Reboot ‘Obviously’ Couldn’t Open Against Taylor Swift’s ‘Eras Tour,’ Says Jason Blum: ‘It’s Too Risky… We Bowed Our Head’

Universal Pictures and Blumhouse thought they had the perfect release date for their upcoming Exorcist reboot: A Friday the 13th in October, the spookiest month of the year. But it turns out the only thing more terrifying than that cursed day is Taylor Swift. Once the Grammy winner announced her Eras Tour concert film was opening on Oct. 13, the studios bumped up the release of Exorcist: Believer to Oct. 6.

The one thing that scares me to death is Taylor Swift! Blumhouse founder and Exorcist producer Jason Blum recently told Entertainment Weekly.

We had this amazing Friday the 13th in October, which is the single best day to release a scary movie, he added. Obviously, we moved off that [date] and we bowed our head to Taylor Swift.

At first, Blum toyed with keeping the Oct. 13 release date for Exorcist: Believer and launching an Exorswift movement, a nod to the Barbenheimer craze that swept the nation over the summer. But there was no guarantee that Exorswift would take off in the public consciousness, so a date change was the only sensible move.

It was too risky to see if Exorswift was going to take or not, Blum said. People will still have the Exorswift opportunity, so maybe we got to have our cake and eat it too.

The Exorcist: Believer, directed by David Gordon Green, sees the return of Ellen Burstyns Chris MacNeil from the 1973 original. The story picks up as two local girls escape into the woods, only to return three days later with no memory of the episode. This unleashes a horrific chain of events, forcing the father of one of the girls to seek out MacNeil, the only living person who has experienced anything like it before. The cast also includes Leslie Odom Jr., Ann Dowd and Jennifer Nettles. The film re-teams Blumhouse and Green, who worked together on the most recent Halloween trilogy.

I really give David Gordon Green credit for that, Blum said. He was able to get Jamie Lee Curtis comfortable [on 2018s Halloween], and David got Ellen to feel comfortable to join us in this iteration of her iconic movie.

While Exorcist: Believer is intended to kick off a new trilogy of horror films, Taylor Swifts Eras Tour concert film will be a huge blockbuster for October. It earned a whopping$26 million in AMC Theatres presalesin a single day (breaking the previous record of $16.9 million held by Spider-Man: No Way Home), and could launch to over $100 million during its opening weekend. Those numbers would instantly make Swifts movie the highest-grossing concert-film of all time.